Fleeting Demographic Rule

aka: Nohamotyo

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Kane buries The Undertaker in 2003 (left), Kane buries The Undertaker in 2010 (right). Note the different headstones in each photo.

"So this WrestleMania moment wasn’t even original; it had already been done numerous times at many events, including prior Wrestlemanias. The 'novelty' was that it happened in a match people wanted to see. Surprise! It’s sort of like a hack magician whose signature trick is making a coin disappear, except instead of his own coin, it’s yours, and you happen to live in a country that mints a $55 piece."

A gimmick or storyline may be reused freely and safely after a few years of dormancy.

The unwritten rule that, after a given number of years, there has been enough turnover in the fanbase that a writer can re-use the same gimmicks and storylines with impunity.

The general principle applies to any work that is enough of a Long Runner and/or has enough of a Fleeting Demographic to outlast most of its initial fanbase.

For example, during the Silver Age of comics, the writers assumed that their demographic was kids ages 9-11 — which would make a three-year turnover safe — and that their demographic rarely read comics frequently enough to notice the repetition. They also believed that even if they did read them often, they wouldn't notice. This has been turned away from in recent times because comics are now written (and often read) by people who lovecontinuity; if they make events repeat, then they'll eventually come up with a metaplot to explain it. Also, the rise of the Internet has made it trivial to compare works that are years or decades apart, making it practically impossible for writers to pull this off unnoticed.

This is also to be avoided if your franchise is subject to a Popularity Polynomial, as all the 'old' fans haven't actually left but are just waiting quietly for it to become cool again. As a result, they'll spot something overly-familiar.

Not the same as Older Than They Think, this influence extends to tropes, plots, lines and gimmicks of more recent vintage, that the viewer can be reasonably expected to have seen since it was The Big Cool New Thing just a couple of years ago — and a couple of years before that, and a couple of years before that, and...

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

The Pokémon anime, due to being aimed at children around the ages of 3 - 7, meaning that their current audience will grow up and be replaced by a new set of children about every three or four years. Easily done because much of it is Filler.

Probably the most obvious is that (starting with Hoenn for females, and Unova for males) every time Ash goes to a new region, he meets new people who will soon be his new traveling companions. In Hoenn and Sinnoh, Pikachu will accidently destroy the female companion's bicycle,note At least (although Bonnie does still get shocked just like Iris did). In Alola, this tradition is discarded entirely. mirroring the beginning of the first season.

Starting with Hoenn, the writers also employ the Bag of Spilling by having Ash drop off all of his Pokemon (save Pikachunote and Aipom for Sinnoh, but only because she followed him) to train new monsters.note Externally justified through the various trade restrictions betweenthegenerations; from that perspective, Johto is the outlier. Except that Pikachu always suffers from Level Drain just afterwards.note In Hoenn, the cause was a big magnet piloted by Team Rocket. Unova, on the other hand, sees Pikachu getting overloaded by the new Legendary Pokémon Zekrom unable to use electric attacks. He recovered them later, although Pikachu still inexplicably loses to low-leveled Pokémon from time to time, including the starter Pokémon of a rival who had just picked it up from Professor Juniper. Sinnoh, Kalos, and Alola didn't have explanations for Pikachu's weakening at all.

One of the most blatant (and non-filler) examples: In Hoenn, Ash enters a PokéRinger event in which flying Pokemon compete to collect rings and place them on goal posts. Ash uses his Taillow, a bird Pokemon, which evolves during the competition and surprises its opponent by hitting the ring onto the goal with its wing, rather than carrying it in its beak. An episode that aired about five years later repeated this plot exactly; just replace Hoenn with Sinnoh, Taillow with Staravia, and Swellow with Staraptor.note And James with Paul, though James also competes in the repeat. Both episodes even use the exact same background music during their respective climaxes. Kalos also had a similar event in the Sky Relay.

While it didn't happened in Pokémon XY, and has not happened yet in SM, every new generation of companions (Misty & Brock/Tracey, May & Max, Dawn, Iris & Cilan) has featured an episode where most of the cast and/or their Pokemon ends up getting afflicted by Stun Spore, leaving them paralyzed. It would come down to the remaining cast to seek out a type of plant that grows at the bottom of a lake in order to cure them. This would always involve a water-type Pokemon either joining the cast or overcoming one of it's own problems... Or both, in the case of Black & White.

Also, if Ash gets a Fire-type starter Pokémon, expect it to be abused or abandoned in some way or other; in Quilava's case, however, it was wild, and was about to be caught by an abusive trainer. This pattern was broken with Litten, who was simply a wild Pokémon looking after an elderly Stoutland until it died from old age.

In some more specific examples, the Diamond & Pearl series reused individual plots. Pika and Goliath retreaded Electrick Shock Showdown (though it at least also had flashbacks to said episode) and established for the new audience why Pikachu wouldn't evolve. Crossing Paths, Cottonee in Love, Butterfree and Me, and To Catch a Pokémon Smuggler were Bye Bye Butterfree but starring Jessie's Dustox, a wild Cottonee, another Butterfree, and a wild Vivillon respectively.

When Misty and Brock, Ash's two original companions and without a doubt the most recognizable of the human cast except for him, reappeared in Sun and Moon the anime had to reintroduce them. This is because neither had appeared in almost ten years and (assuming they don't watch reruns or didn't play either HGSS or BW2) the current demographic doesn't remember who they are.

The Pretty Cure franchise will often reuse similar team formations and item after a few years have passed.

Maho Girls Precure notably has a 2-girl team joined by a third member halfway through the series, which hasn't happened since the original Pretty Cure series. Suite Pretty Cure ♪ Was this for a quarter of its run until a fourth member was added.

Executive Meddling led to this happening during the fourth season of Sailor Moon, since the execs were convinced that the girls who had been watching the show since the beginning were now growing out of it. In addition to simplifying the plot, the ReTool jettisoned the Outer Senshi and tried to put the spotlight back on the core cast and Chibiusa (who the execs thought would appeal to younger girls). The plan backfired, and the series suffered a ratings slump as a result.

Archie Comics — being a series marketed to a family audience and thus one with a much higher turnover rate — has never had problems reusing story lines, the only difference between them being the art and the characters' fashions. With the advent of their drama-focusedLife with Archie series and the popularity of gay character Kevin Keller, it's been interesting to see the company find success by taking new creative risks.

Hank Pym and the Avengers face Ultron. Ultron is seemingly destroyed, only to return in a new form.

The Vision is dismantled or destroyed.

The Avengers have had no less than three separate stories with the basic premise of "The team is criticized for its complete lack of diversity. An inexperienced/unqualified black superhero is added to the roster, creating friction with the white Avengers. Drama ensues." First time it was The Falcon, second time it was Rage, and third time it was Triathlon.

In The Beano, The Dandy and other British Comics the fleeting demographic rule can sometimes apply to reprints. In that they wait a few years after a strip ends until they begin to reprint the strip. This is because the usual reader only reads the comic for 4 or 5 years and so there is a lot of reader turnover.

In Captain America, Steve Rogers' career is totally changed. Maybe he's a werewolf, an aged man who has to wear a suit, or an agent of HYDRA. Or, he's gone underground, uses a different superhero identity, and has been replaced by someone else who takes up the mantle of Captain America.

Following The Death of Captain America, Bucky the Winter Soldier took on the mantle of Captain America. Eventually, Steve Rogers became Captain America again.

During Axis, Steve Rogers ends up using his old exoskeleton as a Shout-Out to the last time he was turned into an old man, in a 1995 story line.

Sam Wilson became the official Captain America in Captain America: Sam Wilson. In Nick Spencer's Captain America, Steve Rogers is back to normal and resumes being Captain America. Now both are Captain America.

A new event brings new characters that will bring a lasting change to everything since they'll interact with the characters you already know and love and will sort of fade away over time in Bloodlines, Worlds Collide, or how about WildStorm again.

During the final years of the TV Comics Doctor Who licensed comic strip, complete stories from the Third (and in one case Second) Doctor eras of the strip were reprinted with Tom Baker's face crudely drawn over the original Doctor's.

In Fantastic Four, everything is changed when — a team member dies, there is a huge change to the team roster, a relative of a team member shows up from another dimension, or Doctor Doom does something totally different this time and never brings it up again.

Averted in 52. Booster Gold's storyline was originally going to be finding evidence that the time line was broken, falling apart at the seams, and he would need to fix it to restore order. As the four writers of the book got to work though, they realized each of them had been through this before and none of them really wanted to do it again ("Unless there was a prize for being the hundredth people to write one"). Thus before they got too far into the story, they reworked Booster's storyline so that he spent it butting heads with a new hero called Supernova who turns out to be Booster (isn't time travel fun?), which led into a conspiracy about a time-traveling superhero.

In Incredible Hulk, the relationship between Bruce Banner and The Hulk is permanently changed. Is Hulk the one in charge now? Is it Banner? Maybe they're separate now. Maybe one side is Darker and Edgier, and one side is completely gone.

The original run of long-running (1954-93) weekly UK football comic Roy Of The Rovers was hit hard with this; the summer strips generally involved the Melchester Rovers team touring some South American country and getting kidnapped to keep the story exciting. Since Fleetway didn't think anyone would keep reading longer than three years, Roy was kidnapped five times in 10 years. This sort of thing was parodied in the Viz strip Billy the Fish.

Secret Invasion and Civil War, were awfully similar to past Marvel Universe storylines (ROM: Space Knight and many, many old mutant registration acts), and no hero involved noticed (except the Mutants themselves, whose response to the other heroes asking them to get involved in the Registration conflict, after never once helping when the mutants had to deal with such issues, was an emphatic "Sucks, don't it?").

And both of these were extremely similar to earlier storylines done in Astro City.

Also House of M. How many times have the heroes woken up one morning to see reality has been changed drastically and they need to fix it? Enough that Cap and Hawkeye's reaction back in "The Morgan Conquest" was basically, "Not again!"

The Time Runs Out crossover between The Avengers and New Avengers, which is set to be capped off with a Secret Wars revival, has a number of similarities to Civil War. The only major conceptual shakeup is that this time, it's Iron Man and his team of heroes who are considered fugitives, rather than Captain America's.

Shazam in the 1970s was notable in that even the regular issues were usually split between new stories and reprints from the Fawcett era. Since Fawcett had stopped publishing Captain Marvel stories in 1953, it was a fairly safe bet that they were new to the vast majority of readers.

"The Clone Saga", the remake of a 1970's story arc which debuted the Jackal (himself a low-rent replacement for the Green Goblin), hit the Spider-books in the early 90's with a similar goal in mind. By the end, was widely considered a huge failure, and concluded in the exact same manner as the original. Marvel ended up backtracking on many of its "big changes."

Used as justification by the editors of Spider-Man for the "One More Day" continuity reboot, under the theory that if they stick to their guns through reader complaints for five years, no one will have enough of an attention span to remember it ever happened. Proven wrong five years later in 2012, where you could still turn over any metaphorical rock on the Internet and find someone still griping about "One More Day..." and Amazing Spider-Man sales declined throughout.

In old-school Silver AgeSuperman and Superboy comics, plots were reused frequently, and not just in a "this bears a passing resemblance to that other story" way. More like, Jimmy becomes a werewolf under circumstances that are similar to but completely unrelated to the time it happened three years ago. (Real years, not comic years.) Superboy also became the leader of a wolf pack twice. And Lois or Lana got Supes' powers on enough occasions you may as well consider them reserve superheroes.

Craig "Mr. Silver Age" Shutt, in his book Baby Boomer Comics, cataloged 53 "duplicated" Superman stories. Typically, the rewrites would be printed 5-15 years after the original stories, but one Lois Lane story was reused only one year after its first telling.

Eventually the writers caved and Lana did become a superhero in her own right - Insect Queen. While this has since been retconned away, there is a current Insect Queen in the DC Universe...with the name of Lonna Leing.

This happened in the Golden Age too, when THE EXACT SAME STORIES were sometimes used only with new drawn pictures.

Robert Kanigher, an incredibly long-tenured writer at DC, recycled scripts in part or in whole on many occasions, most notably throughout his landmark 22-year run on Wonder Woman. Especially so in the mid-to-late 50s, when he seemed to dramatically overestimate the readership turnover rate — for instance, Wonder Woman went back in time and met Robin Hood twice... with the two very similar stories separated by only 11 issues. Later, Kanigher would also reuse material from Wonder Woman in other comics he was writing, particularly Metal Men.

This is at least in part because of Marv Wolfman's immense success with the 'New Teen Titans', which was at the time DC's best selling and most highly acclaimed title for a good while. Many storylines attempt to ape the success of his, with some success and some....not so much success at times.

Not just Raven. If it's Wednesday, there's a good chance they'll be fighting a group of evil Titans. Or one of them will die. Also count the number of stories where Cyborg angsts about being a machine, only to eventually come to terms with his appearance.

Titans: Paper, Scissors, Stone actually lampshades this last part as an explicit and inseparable part of the Titans mythos, and one that the new group's leader failed to take into account when she set out to recreate the circumstances of the team's forming.

Iceman from the X-Men and the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four have both been subject to countless stories where they finally decide to start acting like adults and vow to stop being immature jokesters. It never lasts.

X-Men as an entire franchise has arguably been doing this since 1991. Whatever changes are made to characters, most last five or so years before going back to the status quo that Chris Claremont had before he left the book. It's notable that Claremont himself did not subscribe to this, and things kept changing constantly during his run, and never went completely back to normal most of the time. Apparently, it never occurs to Marvel that this might be why the Claremont years are looked upon as the golden era of X-Men comics.

Magneto does something irredeemably evil, reforms to help the X-men, stays neutral, and goes back to being evil.

In Disney Mouse and Duck Comics made in Italy, it seems that every 5-6 years or so they have to write a story where some character becomes a pro golfer, with the only purpose to explain every single golf-related term to the readers via footnotes.

Film

The trailers for Spy Kids 4D hyped the "4D Aroma-Scope" (actually a scratch-and-sniff card) as if it was a new, revolutionary thing. Not to mention that the film itself came out eight years after the prior entry in the series, Spy Kids 3D, and ten years since the first one. The children who were in the target audience when the original films came out are all grown up while the children currently in the target audience will have probably never heard of the series before (after all, it didn't exactly stay in the public consciousness after it left theaters). As such, the franchise was essentially remarketed as though new.

The franchise is infamous for announcing ahead of virtually every Bond film that this time the Bond girl will be an Action Girl who is treated as an equal match for Bond, which is then immediately forgotten and next time the idea is again treated as new.

Daniel Craig is not the first new Bond to be Darker and Edgier. A general rule of thumb is that Bond switches between being camp and being serious each time they change actors.

The sequel to Cats & Dogs came out when the kids who had seen the original were too old to see the sequel, and the kids who would see the sequel were too young to have seen the original.

Literature

Used in-universe in Watership Down, due to rabbits' short lifespan. The main events of the novel are the stuff of legend some five years later, and humans are portrayed as driving cars and smoking cigarettes in the mythic past.

Live Action TV

Networks for kids, teenagers, and young adults are this way. They know that in five years they're going to have a completely new crop of the target audience, and the crop from five years ago will begin to notice the reused plots and complain.

Some Star Treks overused their stock plots ad nauseam. The attitude seems to have been, 'Well, we've done this plot in four other shows, but have we ever done it on this show? No? Greenlight that sucker! Who wants pizza?"

Rene Auberjonois: I was sitting with Scott Bakula at lunch about two or three days into shooting the episode. He said, “I like this script. I think this is a good one.” I said, “Yeah, we did this one in season three.” And he looked at me and said, “What?”

Parodied on Futurama when Kif shows Amy the HoloShed. He states that nothing in the simulation will hurt her, unless there's a malfunction and everything comes to life again, but that hardly ever happens. Several minutes later, the greatest villains in history (including an ax-wielding Evil Lincoln) show up just after a malfunction. They know the drill and start smashing stuff. In another episode, a Star Trek TOS obsessed Energy Being forces the Planet Express crew and the TOS cast to fight to the death. When asked where he got that "idiotic idea", the alien rattles off the numbers of four TOS episodes where that happened (and Fry adds one he missed, much to the alien's chagrin).

Worf: We were like warriors from the ancient sagas. There was nothing we could not do.

O'Brien: Except keep the holodecks working right.

Every iteration of Star Trek does Moby-Dick. Plus three movies as well - Khan with Kirk as the whale and in First Contact, Picard has the Borg as his whale. Star Trek Into Darkness flips the script by having Kirk with Khan as the whale ( and after Kirk's apparant death, Spock with Khan as the whale) Note that all three compare the situation to Moby Dick. Stewart actually played Ahab two years after First Contact in the Disney version of Moby Dick.

And for Sisko and Janeway, we had "For the Uniform" (although the characters in this episode reference Les Misérables) and "Equinox" respectively, both of which involved renegade Starfleet officers. The first instance of a Moby Dick plot was seen as far back as 1967's "The Doomsday Machine" and "Obsession."

Futurama parodied this as well, with Leela becoming obsessed with getting revenge on an actual space whale, and in the end found out the whale actually feeds on obsession, and antagonizes spaceship pilots because they tend to get obsessed easily.

Voyager and Enterprise were especially bad at this, leading to criticism that both ignored their premises to be "Next Gen lite" and recycle old episodes in the belief no one would recall episodes from any prior series. Hence why many Enterprise episodes features technology and species wildly inappropriate for the time; they were introduced back in 1987, and nobody would remember back that far. Not that they cared. And why Voyager did things like base an episode around the legal issue of the rights of artificial lifeforms, even though TNG had resolved that early on. Parodied in Voltaire's "USS Make-Shit-Up". One verse expresses deja vu over Voyager, then has a flash of memory — it was "way back in the sixties, when they called it 'Lost In Space'."

However, as with this trope in general, certain complaints can fall into the trope of They Copied It, Now It Sucks. For example, even though VOY's "Author, Author" and TNG's "The Measure of a Man" both dealt with the rights of artificial life forms, there was an important difference: Data was an android who was considered a person by almost everyone, whereas the Doctor was an intangible hologram intended as a short-term supplement to the medical team, and had a harder time getting people to regard him as a person and not just a piece of technology. His lack of a permanent physical body was one of the key differences between the two. The fact that Data had over a decade earlier established the precedent for artificial life being recognized under Federation law is never even mentioned in the Voyager episode, though, which is rather odd.

Stargate SG-1 self-consciously makes use of this by having similar plotlines (time travel, alternate dimensions) refer to or even depend on previous episodes with similar plots.

Each time they encounter the same phenomena they will always recap the events of the previous mission, and try to figure out if what they learned that time can be useful again. In Stargate Atlantis sometimes the same solution is used again (or the same problem), with a twist.

Sometimes if the plot is similar to that from another media, this will even be lampshaded within the story, such as an episode involving a "Groundhog Day" Loop when O'Neill referred to the villain who had engineered it as "The King of Groundhog Day".

The Stargate franchise has never been afraid of metahumor. A number of SG-1 episodes hinge on the US military providing technical assistance to a sci-fi show about a secret military team that covertly fights aliens, in order to give themselves plausible deniability. Consider for a moment the plot of SG-1, and that they are Backed by the Pentagon to the point of casting actual American military personnel for bit characters (including twoChiefs of Staffplaying themselves), and you can only imagine how fun the Wild Mass Guessing for that show can be.

Lampshaded in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger in two different ways. In the Legend War sequence in the first episode, teams with the same theme can be seen fighting alongside one another (such as the Kakurangers and Hurricanegers). Further, a Running Gag has the Gokaiger getting teams mixed up (such as their changing into the Turborangers during the Carranger tribute episode).

Power Rangers RPM (2009) also recycled a plotline from Power Rangers in Space (1998), beat for beat: A mysterious loner (Andros/Dillon) joins an established team looking for his missing sister. Said sister is now the resident villainess (Astronema/Tenaya 7), not remembering her pre-abduction life. Halfway though the series, she discovers she has a brother and attempts a Heel–Face Turn, only for the villains to brainwash her with cybernetic implants. The Rangers make things right in the finale.

Both Barney and Sesame Street are subject to this. The former went through wholesale changes of the child cast about once every five years, whereas Sesame Street Muppets have been shown to forget things so they can be taught to a new audience.

The current incarnation of Degrassi has been on TV so long (over a decade) the the show routinely recycles storylines and only slightly updates them depending on the character. For example, the show has dealt with teen pregnancy at least five times (Manny, Emma, Liberty, Anya, and Jenna). An episode in which Emma almost became the victim of a pedophile she met online was recycled twice, first with Darcy and then later with Connor.

106&Park used to have a segment called the "Old School Joint of the Day". Originally they did play videos that were at least a decade or so old with guests even picking some of their favorite songs for the video. As the show went on they began to play younger and younger videos. After people, even A.J. and Free who were hosting at the time, started to complain the segment began to alternate with "The Flashback Joint of the Day" where they could play songs that were only a few years old without drawing the ire of people who knew they weren't really "old school".

Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who script editor during the early 1970s and writer for a longer time, has expressed this in terms of respect for the audience, recommending as a general rule that the audience should never be expected to remember canon details from episodes broadcast more than two years before. Note that this was from an age before VHS or DVD.

It was also an age before you could be absolutely certain that reruns happened, or otherwise we'd not have lost episodes of, among other shows, Doctor Who. If you're expecting to actually gain new viewers, it's actually quite nice to presume that not everybody was watching two years ago, and those who were cannot be expected to have remembered details from an episode that only ran once (maybe twice) so far back.

It is also worth noting that in the 1980s Doctor Who would, to its general detriment, suffer from Continuity Lockout as creators began to over-rely on increasingly obscure references to episodes ten or twenty years old (which still weren't out on VHS or DVD) without making it entirely clear what was going on for the audience members who didn't have detailed flowcharts of the show's history right in front of them at the time. Thus it can be said that Dicks had a point and that there's a valid reason why the mindset behind this trope exists.

One season, the producer and head writer of Doctor Who were planning out the year and decided "It's about time for Terry Nation to do another Dalek story for us again." So they asked him for a Dalek story, and he wrote a Dalek story, but they realized "we like it, but we like it so much, we may have already bought it once or twice." To break the repetition, they had him write a different story, which became "Genesis of the Daleks", which is now considered a classic.

Much like the James Bond example above, the producers have said several times over the years that the Doctor's next companion is going to be a 'strong female character who can think for herself' as though they've never done it before. In fact Barbara, one of the three original companions of the 1st Doctor was a strong female character who could think for herself. Amusingly, the first time this appears to have been used in the press was in 1971 to promote Jo Grant, who was specifically created by the showrunners to be less intelligent and challenging to the Doctor than her predecessor Liz Shaw.

The audio drama Doctor Who and the Pescatons shamelessly recycles most of the Troughton story "Fury From the Deep", on the grounds that the children the drama is aimed at would have been about two or three when the story was aired.

On Home and Away, Martha discovered that her boyfriend was in a marriage of convenience. Surprisingly, this did not remind her of her love affair with Ash nearly three years earlier, which ended because he was married with kids and wasn't about to leave them.

Hilariously subverted on Saturday Night Live. John Goodman was hosting, along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. During his monologue, an audience member stopped him to ask if this was a repeat. John reassured that it wasn't-given that it was a live broadcast and all- but kept getting interrupted by members of the audience who insisted that it was a repeat from a few years ago when John also hosted with Tom Petty as the musical guest. John even brought out Jimmy Fallon, a cast member at that time, who agreed with the audience that this show was, in fact, a repeat and that he remembers it because it was aired when he was in high school.

Virtually every episode from the last few seasons of Bewitched (the Dick Sargent years) re-used the plot of an episode from the Dick York era.

Sometimes happens on QI. If watching the show from the beginning, you will occasionally hear the same joke twice (not as a Running Gag), or hear a question based on something that was already discussed at length in a previous episode.

One example is the story about how Kangaroos got their name and what it means. This story myth was told twice at length in two different episodes. The second time offers no reference to the first, so it isn't an In-Joke.

In Series H, Stephen Fry finished one episode with a scat joke about pathologists and dead bodies. This joke was already told by Alan Davies, several seasons back.

In Series J, Stephen asks how elephants drink. Alan suggests using its trunk and gets a forfeit, and Jimmy Carr quips that they drink to forget. Back in series A, during a question about elephants' lack of tolerance for alcohol, Alan made the same mistake (without forfeit) and Clive Anderson made the same joke.

In the "Fire and Freezing" episode, one of the facts was that fire stations are now often built on one story to avoid spending time getting downstairs even by way of the pole. In "Inland Revenue," when fireman's poles were mentioned again, Al Murray asked why they don't just build on one story if speed is such a concern. Stephen and the other panellists came up with reasons like needing room for the fire engines, and nobody seemed to remember learning otherwise.

They occasionally do catch these (more than once in the form of Alan contributing an interesting fact only for Stephen to point out that he learned it on QI).

This is subverted when they ask questions which have been asked before, and (predictably) Alan provides the previous answer only to find out it's now wrong.

The most famous example is the question, "How many moons does the Earth have?". In the A Series "Astronomy" episode the answer is 2, due to the inclusion of Cruithne. By "Beavers", the answer is either one or five due to the discovery of three more satellites and if Cruithne is a moon so are they. In "Knowledge", the answer is at least 18 thousand due to the discovery of "mini-moons". And by "Landmarks", the Earth has no moon; the Earth and the Moon are instead a binary planet system.

The "Knowledge" episode was based on the fact that the answers to many questions that they had asked in the past were by the 11th series proven false due to new scientific discoveries. The episode rewarded the panelists points they were statistically owed for having possibly been right after all these years. Series mainstay Alan Davies is given 737.66 points; by the end of the episode he's lost 50 through his usual wrong answers.

Buffy: Season seven episode "Him" rehashes the plot of season two episode "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" (a love spell gone wrong causes many women to fall blindly for the same guy, with terrible consequences). Xander even reminisces fondly about the prior event (including his best friend leading a mob of women and trying to kill him with an axe).

There were also multiple episodes based on the characters' fears becoming manifest, though for different reasons. A first season episode based on folks' nightmares, and a fourth season episode with a haunted house.

Angel, would occasionally reuse plots from its parent show. For instance, both shows have an episode that involves the main cast getting amnesia and meeting each other for the first time again. To be fair, by the time that plot got used, the shows aired on different networks. Plus the fact that Angel had a slightly different premise, much different tone, and most importantly, completely different characters. Put the same characters in a different situation, and they react differently. Put different characters in the same situation... and they react differently.

Many of the skits in the revival of All That were rehashes and reimaginings of the skits from the original set ("Cooking With Randy" became "Coffee And Sugar," Repairman/Detective Dan/Stuart became Randy Quench: Volunteer Fireman, etc.), which ended three years prior. This became especially obvious in the ten year anniversary special, which involved new skits from both sets.

A related version happens in TV made for toddlers. In the cases of In The Night Garden, only 100 episodes were ever commissioned, despite being wildly popular. The logic is that the demographic will only watch for two years then grow out of the show, meaning after 100 episodes you can start from the beginning again and nobody but adults will notice. This is also the reason why the show has no overarching plot or a an episode that acknowledges itself as the first or last.

This is similar to many studios only commissioning 65 episodes for its kids', tween, early and late teen shows. It takes a monumental push by fans to get more of the same show instead of using the same 65 scripts for the next one they churn out. This was a pretty big issue in the mid 2000s with Disney Channel, where the hugely popular Lizzie McGuire ended at 65 episodes in just 2 seasons and Kim Possible needed an obscure contract from a German television station to get a 4th season. Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place have over 85 and The Suite Life on Deck has over 100 when you count both series.

Originally, this practice started as something of an insurance policy for all sides — if the show did well, great, it would be signed up for more than 65 episodes. On the other hand, if it bombed and was canceled, 65 was the minimum most stations would purchase for syndication (allowing them to run the show each weekday for 13 weeks without repeats). By ensuring that there would be at least that number of episodes, the producers hoped to guarantee they would make at least some money off the show, and this worked reasonably well. (Famously, the first seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation were produced under such a deal.) But add in the idea that your shows are basically interchangeable dreck that nobody cares too closely about and you end up switching shows each time the grace period expires.

Parodied on Have I Got News for You: an episode had Boris Johnson and Janet Street-Porter as guests, then the following year they both happened to be booked the same week again. Angus Deayton lampshaded this by joking that due to a legal loophole, it was cheaper for the BBC to film the same episode over again rather than just repeat it.

The shows of the Disney Channel Live-Action Universe, when compared across the board, fall heavily in this trope (not surprising considering the Fleeting Demographic is considered especially in play).

Seasons 1 and 4 of Smallville both involve an episode in which Clark wants to try out for football, and his parents are against it because of his superpowers. There were, however, some key differences. The first time he ended up dropping out, the second time he stayed on the team at the end of the episode. Also, in the first episode it was the main storyline, while it was a B-plot in season 4.

Supernatural: In season 5, Castiel gradually lost his powers as a result of being cut off from Heaven until he was eventually turned into a normal human. Four seasons later, he's turned into a human again for season 9. His first stint as a human is never even mentioned. Word of God has even mistakenly referred to him as being human for the first time.

Magazines

Bridal magazines presume that their readers will only be subscribing for the duration of their engagements, and thus repeat articles (with very slight tweaks) on a 16-20 month cycle.

Outdoors-oriented magazines will often repeat articles annually with only slight tweaks. For example, photography magazines seem to have a repeating "Summer photography guide", "Fall photography guide", "Winter photography guide", "Spring photography guide" cycle. Bicycling and running magazines love to offer seasonal advice, which does not change much from year to year.

Pro Wrestling

Coined by Professional Wrestling promoter, writer, on-air personality, and general jack-of-all-trades Jim Cornette, the Seven Year Rule is the unwritten pro wrestling rule that, after seven years, there has been enough turnover in the fanbase that a writer can re-use the same gimmicks and angles with impunity. As the theory goes, any wait shorter than seven years may result in fans noticing the rehashing, and calling the promotion on the re-use. After that, a few diehard longtime fans may notice and become upset, but almost everybody will accept the product as new.

Thanks to a very recent bit of recycling, Chris Jericho can now count himself part of this list. Back in early 1998, when he was still part of (and, as legend states, rather disgruntled with) WCW, he showed up with The List of 1004 Holds (ARMBAR!!) as part of his feud with Dean Malenko. Fastforward eighteen years to 2016, where Jericho (with his "best friend Kevin Owens") begins to chronicle his various grievances with the WWE, centred around the recent brand split (another recycling from the early part of the previous decade) and the people with whom he shares roster space. How does he accomplish this? Why, with The List of Jericho, of course, complete with him missing out numerous points on said list during lengthy recitations and people (such as The New Day and the reason for the List being started, Mick Foley) being told "...YOU JUST MADE THE LIST!" on multiple occasions. Then again, this is Chris Jericho we're talking about. If he can get a piece of paper over once, he can damn well do it again.

Certain gimmicks reoccur so often in Professional Wrestling that it is not unusual to have more than one example thereof existing at the same time - albeit necessarily on different TV shows or in different promotions. Whereas WWE boasts a mentally unstable "monster" who uses the Chokeslam finisher named Kane, TNA has a mentally unstable "monster" who uses the Chokeslam as a signature move named Abyss. And in late 2004/early 2005, this mimicry was seen within WWE itself as Gene Snitsky and Jon Heidenreich each performed the role of an intense monster heel with Punctuated! For! Emphasis! speaking patterns on Raw and SmackDown, respectively. Both of them spawned IWC memes (Snitsky's "It Wasn't My Fault" and Heidenreich's "Heidenrape") They even lampshaded this fact at the 2004 Survivor Series when they met for the first time, as well as had feuds in the same time frame with the Brothersof Destruction.

"The Narcissist" Lex Luger was recycled as "The Reflection of Perfection" Mark Jindrak after 11 years, complete with a hammy manager to talk him up.

See also "The Masterpiece," Chris Masters, in 2005-07.

Though the name similarity isn't there, many people see the similarities between Mr. Perfect, and Dolph Ziggler: long blond hair, tan skin, and an obsession with "perfection" (the former's nickname, the latter's second theme song.) Ziggler's manager is also an authority figure (see Triple H and Steph below).

Flair started accompanying Triple H to his matches starting after WWE Unforgiven in October 2002. Batista moved from WWE SmackDown! to Raw and joined them, with Randy Orton completing the group on January 20, 2003, and the name Evolution debuting two weeks later.

At Royal Rumble 1994, WWE ChampionYokozuna defeated The Undertaker in a Casket Match after 10 other wrestlers got involved. In 1998 he is again the challenger for the Title at the Royal Rumble in a Casket Match, and again a total of 10 people are involved but this time it only really took 1, Kane (who set the casket on fire). It again started a this time shorter Hiatus. Then in 2005, Randy Orton and his father had a casket match with Undertaker, again winning by outnumbering him and then setting the casket on fire.

In 1997, Kane started tormenting The Undertaker, and at the following WrestleMania (XIV), Taker defeated Kane. This was followed by a long period of general peace and cooperation between them, including a reign as the tag champs. In 2003, Kane buried Taker in a Buried Alive match, and at the following Wrestlemania (XX), Taker defeated Kane, leading to a general period of peace with some cooperation over the past four years. Seven—er, six—year rule magnified exactly.

Speaking of The Undertaker and Kane, when the Undertaker first debuted, he was announced as "Cain The Undertaker." They didn't call him by that name again for over seven years, and then his brother "Kane" debuted.

In 1994, there was an infamous "Undertaker vs. Undertaker" feud. Or more accurately, "Undertaker vs. Guy In Undertaker Costume Who Is Visibly Shorter And Less Muscular Than Undertaker". Fast forward to 2006, and there was a "Kane vs. Guy In Kane's Old Costume Who Is Visibly Shorter And Less Muscular Than Kane" feud. (The fake Kane was played by the same wrestler who played hillbilly Festus and CM Punk disciple Luke Gallows.)

In 2010, Kane took out the Undertaker for a few months and the Undertaker came back for revenge. When Kane explained his actions, he stated it was because the Undertaker had shown weakness in his match with Shawn Michaels. Refer to the above, it is very similar to the storyline where Kane buried Taker alive because he showed weakness in helping protect Stephanie from Vince. This feud fully acknowledges the past storyline, saying that last time, the time wasn't right for Kane's "master plan", and that he's been building up to this since the year after he debuted. The timeline also fits; it had been about another six years.

The feud then led to a Buried Alive match with Undertaker losing due to outside interference, leaving Kane to ask for a bulldozer to dump soil into the grave, almost seven years since the last time this happened (pictured above).

WWE redid the Montreal Screwjob angle, wherein the referee, the owner/manager, and a smarmy wrestler conspire to "screw" a fan favorite out of a title. Anyways, the wrestler who got screwed over is the Undertaker, who then proceeded to abduct Teddy Long, in a manner reminiscent of the Not My Driver portion of the maligned "Higher Power" storyline when he abducted Stephanie in much the same way. Not only did they reuse old storylines, they mixed them together.

WWEloves to reference and re-enact the Montreal Screwjob. It was repeated merely a year later at the 1998 Survivor Series, with Vince screwing over Mankind.

Other companies like to reference it, too. Less than two months after the original, Bret Hart came out after the main event of Starrcade where Hulk Hogan pinned Sting and claimed referee (and nWo lackey) Nick Patrick made a quick count (well, he was supposed to in kayfabe, but mistakenly made a regular count, but that's neither here nor there) and yelled he wouldn't let "it" happen again. He restarted the match and Sting got Hogan to submit to the Scorpion Deathlock (which is the same hold as Bret's "Sharpshooter", and the move that HBK used on Bret when he was "screwed") to win. Years later, in TNA, Hogan and Kurt Angle re-enacted the Screwjob as well.

And now they've done it again, but this time with a subversion. At Money in the Bank 2011, controversial heelCM Punk (Who was also involved in the Undertaker screwjob) threatened to leave the company with the belt after beating then current champ John Cena. When Cena had Punk locked in his signature submission, Vince and office stooge John Laurinaitis came down trying to screw Punk out of the title; however, Cena knocked out Vince's crony, saying that he was going to win this his way, only to have Punk use the distraction to hit Cena with the Go To Sleep, pin him, and leave the company with the championship.

In late 1999, Triple H, the top heel, "married"Stephanie McMahon and used her power in the company to rule the roster with an iron fist as the McMahon-Helmsley Regime, allowing him to keep a strangle hold on the Championship. Cut to 2008 and the same thing is repackaged with Edge and Vickie Guerrero (who, like Steph, was part of a famous wrestling family). Ironically, back in 2000, Edge and his tag team partner Christian voiced confusion on whether the group was a regime or a faction (both terms were used throughout the stable's history) and settled on "Fac-gime."

Life Imitates Art: In late 2003, Paul Levesque (Triple H) married Stephanie McMahon in real life, and (it can be argued) used their combined power in the company to rule the roster with an iron fist, allowing him to keep a strangle hold on the Championship.

The feud between The Undertaker and Triple H at WrestleMania XXVII was this. They had last competed against each other at WrestleMania X-Seven. WWE went out of its way not to bring this up, and in fact acted as if Taker and Triple H had never faced each other at all before (despite having wrestled each other many times in the 1990's even). This tactic may have had a slightly better chance of working if it wasn't a WrestleMania they were expecting everyone to have forgotten about.

In 1999, The Rock stole a win in an I Quit match over Mankind by playing a recording of Mankind yelling "I Quit!" and fooling the officials into awarding him the match. In 2011, The Miz stole a win in an I Quit match over John Cena with the exact same trick, simply updated for the twenty-first century. Rather than use the PA system like The Rock did, Miz had his then-protége Alex Riley (who was present due to The Miz abusing the "no disqualification" clause present in such matches) play a soundbite of Cena yelling "I Quit!" on his smartphone into a microphone. It didn't work. The referee caught on to his trick, leading him to reverse the decision and restart the match. Freed from his kendo stick beating, Cena then went and made Miz quit for real inside three minutes.

There are strong parallels between CM Punk's mid-summer 2011 storyline (TL;DR: his contract is revealed to be expiring the night that he competes for the WWE Championship, before which he proceeds to verbally shit all over WWE under Vince McMahon and John Cena's hegemony, threatening to take the belt to other promotions, and then actually won the belt in his hometown while letting his contract run out) and the "Summer of Punk" angle in Ring of Honor (his supposedly final match was for the ROH World Title, which he won only to reveal that he was going to WWE, sign his WWE contract on the title and then would be "chased" by the ROH roster attempting to take it back before he could run off with it).

TNA subverting the rule caused problems when they rehashed the entire storyline late 2013, with AJ Styles as Punk and Dixie Carter as Vince McMahon. Since this is two years removed from the original storyline that skyrocketed Punk to superstardom, everyone noticed the similarities so the storyline kind of fell flat. It did not help that Dixie Carter made a poor man's Vince. However, what probably killed the whole thing all together were AJ's contract negotiations at the time, much like how Punk's were disputed during the summer of 2011. AJ Styles, one of the TNA Originals who has stuck around since the company's very inception, the epitome of Undying Loyalty, finally left TNA, forcing the company to remove the title from him and kill his TNA career. AJ not sticking around destroyed the entire storyline and most likely TNA's last hope for a comeback.

Much of the Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat feud of 1989 was a rehash of earlier angles, including Steamboat stripping Flair naked in the ring. The two hadn't wrestled in five years, and in the interim the business had experienced almost 100% fan turnover. Ergo, a slick updating of five-year-old spots was probably the top feud of the year.

As much due to time as the original version occurring pre-TV.

In 2003 Brock Lesnar was in a match against The Big Show for the Heavyweight Championship, one spot called for them to superplex off the second rope, which imploded the ring. Fast forward to 2011 and the Vengeance PPV and the spot happens all over again, this time with Mark Henry and the Big Show, again. Unlike Lesnar/Show, which was at the end of the show, Henry/Show was followed by a WWE Championship match with John Cena and Alberto Del Rio. It was a Last Man Standing Match, which worked out amazingly well. And then in 2017, the same thing happened a third time, this time with Braun Strowman and, you guessed it, the Big Show. Interestingly enough, Big Show was the victim of the "superplex" all three times.

Like the popularity of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin leading into the Attitude Era in the late 90s, it's happening all over again now with CM Punk being the straight-talking, Pepsi drinking Anti-Hero who rebels against WWE's management. Punk being likened to Austin, as well as a new Attitude Era coming, certainly help in making the comparison to the late 90s. Whether this is all an elaborate storyline/gambit on the part of Vince McMahon and the creative team is unknown, but if it is, it makes this one hell of a Batman Gambit, and Vince one hell of a Magnificent Bastard/Chessmaster for him to know the fans would immediately love Punk.

Around 2004, former WCW wrestler Ernest "The Cat" Miller made his WWE debut, basically a comedy jobber who danced in the ring to the song "Somebody Call My Mama", and provided the 2004 Royal Rumble with its very own Big-Lipped Alligator Moment before disappearing. Eight years later, a wrestler named Brodus Clay made his Raw debut (he was formerly a WWE NXT rookie and a bodyguard for Alberto Del Rio), another dancer, with the exact same theme song that everyone onscreen acts like they've never heard before.

In 2002, Hulk Hogan and the Rock finally met in the ring for the first time at WrestleMania X8. It was touted as a meeting of two legends from two eras. Ten years later, the Rock and John Cena meet under the same terms at WrestleMania XXVIII. It would be no surprise to see John Cena and the then-current force in professional wrestling having the same encounter at the 38th WrestleMania.

Rock & Wrestling Era: a mega-heel called The One Man Gang (a big white guy from Chicago) is transformed into the "African Dream" Akeem after "discovering his African roots".note It was a Take That! to "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes WWE, Inc. Era (a return to the cartoonish-ness of the Rock & Wrestling Era): A-Train (a huge white guy; before that, he was known as Albert) returns after 8 years as Lord Tensai (later just Tensai), having "found himself" in Japan. Which actually has some basis in reality, since Matt "A-Train" Bloom did spend several years wrestling in Japan as Giant Bernard. They eventually gave up on that gimmick and renamed him "Sweet T" Tensai as Brodus Clay's partner in the wacky dancing big fat guy comedy team Tons of Funk.

TNA's Final Resolution 2010, Jay Lethal faced Robbie E for the TNA X Division Title, with Cookie suspended above the ring in a shark cage so she could not interfere. During the match, Cookie threw a foreign object down, which Lethal used against Robbie and was disqualified, allowing Robbie to retain. Just over a year later, at Genesis 2012, Mickie James faced Gail Kim for the Knockouts Title belt, with Madison Rayne suspended above the ring in the same shark cage. Gail retained in a similar way to Robbie (champion's partner deploys foreign object, challenger uses it, is disqualified). Of course these are both call backs to angles ran in IWA Puerto Rico, back when it and TNA Impact both shared Fox Sports net in 2004note Savio Vega being suspended in a cage for Super Phoenix getting a title shot at Ray González. Vega ended up being in charge of the knockouts in TNA later.

Ryback's gimmick, in which he wins very short squash matches and then demands another opponent, has garnered chants of "Goldberg" from the crowd because of their many similarities. It doesn't help that Ryback even looks like Goldberg.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Third-generation wrestler with a gimmick name where he takes the first name from his famous father and the last name from his famous grandfather. Does this describe Rocky Maivia, or Curtis Axelnote Joe Hennig, son of Curt Hennig and grandson of Larry "The Ax" Hennig?

TNA example: AJ Styles has been broody throughout a good part of 2013. Outlaw biker stable Aces & Eights picks up on this and tries to win AJ to their side, to which they almost succeed when Kurt Angle is attacked by AJ while wearing one of their vests. However, this is short-lived as AJ shows he's not playing for Aces & Eights either and lashes out against them too, stating he is "his own man". Clearly drawing inspiration from WCW teasing Sting joining the nWo in 1996 (almost unashamedly rehashing if not for this trope's existence).

One of the most famous feuds of the 1990's was when the Undertaker's manager, Paul Bearer, turned on 'Taker and aligned himself with Kane. Bearer repeatedly threatened to reveal a dark family secret about the Undertaker's past, which eventually culminated in a pay-per-view match with the Undertaker against Kane, and if Undertaker lost, Bearer would reveal the secret. Undertaker won the match, but Bearer revealed the secret anyway: That Kane was the Undertaker's supposedly long-dead half brother. Fast-forward to 2005, when Eddie Guerrero turned on his tag team partner, Rey Mysterio Jr.. Eddie repeatedly threatened to reveal a dark family secret about Rey's past, which eventually culminated in a pay-per-view match with Rey against Eddie, and if Rey lost, Eddie would reveal the secret. Rey won, but Eddie revealed the secret anyway: That Rey's son Dominik was actually Eddie's from a period of time in which he was separated from his wife.

WWE has recycled the "supergenius heel" 'character' a few times: Lanny Poffo became "The Genius" from 1989-91. Later "Dean Douglas" graced us all with his presence. Then, 15 years later, we get the smug intellectual Damien Sandow.

In 2013, WWE hyped up the first match between John Cena and Daniel Bryan as being a really big deal but it was really just the first match they ever had in nine years since they first squared off on WWE Velocity.

The unification of the WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship at the 2013 TLC event was hyped as the most important match in WWE in over 50 years...yet December 2013 marks the 12 year anniversary of Chris Jericho's unification of the WWF Championship and the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Vengeance 2001.

One of the most-remembered moments in the history of WWE/F was Hulk Hogan bodyslamming Andre The Giant at WrestleMania III; but a lot of fans don't realize that Hogan had already bodyslammed Andre (...wait for it...) seven years earlier at a house show in Hamburg, PA.

ECW 03/09/1999, Bubba Ray Dudley cuts a promo comparing The Dudley Boys to God and declares his intentions to suck to soul out of ECW by brutalizing Tommy Dreamer. September 13th, 2013 TNA, Bully Ray boasts about taking Mr. Anderson's soul and compares himself to God.

CM Punk bragging about his reign with the WWE title (over a year), often retaining it by cheating and declaring himself the best in the world is suspiciously similar to Honky Tonk Man - "The greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time!" - and his long reign with the belt, only Punk was a baby face champion who turned heel over the lack of respect he was shown, thus was taken much more seriously and had a much stronger Plausible Deniability as much of the cheating was done by Paul Heyman and The Shield than by himself directly. This includes both men being quickly and unexpectedly defeated by super faces, The Rock and The Ultimate Warrior, to lose their belts. JBL could also be considered the version of this angle that occurred seven years before Punk.

In ECW, Stevie Richards was best known for imitating Raven's former gimmicks but upon arriving in the WWF, he started imitating wrestlers in general. In one of his runs with the company, Charlie Haas did a gimmick where he imitated other wrestlers, usually with his name worked in ("Stone Cold Charlie Haas", "the Glamahaas," "Charlito," etc.) Fast forward to 2014 and Damien Sandow is (for some reason) doing the same shtick, albeit without the name puns. note Also, he doesn't just dress as other wrestlers, but as people or things significant to the city he's performing in, (such as Lebron James in Cleveland or an astronaut in Houston).

Pro wrestling sometimes inverts it by having the 'beast' as the face and the 'beauty' as the heel - usually to evoke Cool Loser vs Alpha Bitch. Notable examples in WWE include LayCool vs Beth Phoenix & Natalya and Paige vs Summer Rae. They were possibly going for this storyline much earlier with Raquel Diaz as the 'beauty' but she left before it could get going. In TNA there has also been The Beautiful People vs Roxxi Laveaux, ODB and Awesome Kong.

How about a female wrestler debuting as a Superstar's Loony Fan? Three sets of WWE Divas have done this: Tori for Sable in 1999, Mickie James for Trish Stratus in 2006 and Rosa Mendes for Beth Phoenix in 2009. Amusingly enough all three girls debuted in the winter of their years. The outcome has actually been different each time however; Sable was the one that turned heel on Tori but Mickie was the one who turned heel on Trish. Due to the This Loser Is You element, Mickie was still cheered over Trish at the blow-off match. Meanwhile Beth was already a heel so there was never a turn on Rosa. The alliance just quietly disappeared after a few months. TNA did this one too: Payton Banks (indie wrestler Rain) debuted in TNA as a fan of Robert Roode, though her animosity was directed to his valet, Ms Brooks.

It seems the "Seven-Year Rule" not only affects the audience but the characters themselves too. At WrestleMania 31, Stephanie McMahon confronted The Rock and said he's too honorable to hit a woman, capping it off with a slap to the face. The Rock, taking the high road, tacitly agreed by going into the audience, getting female MMA fighter Ronda Rousey to join him in the ring, and having her do what he is unwilling to. However he needn't have gone to all the trouble, since video evidence is on record of him doing exactly that fifteen years prior at the same event, WrestleMania 2000. His victim? Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, whom he delivered a Rock Bottom and People's Elbow to in the finale of the show following his loss in the Fatal Four-Way championship match. In fact Stephanie's actions almost mirror her actions from the latter event (slapping The Rock in an attempt to provoke him), except in this case he simply didn't call her bluff.note Now it does make sense for him not to have struck her since WWE's values have changed since 2000 but it is still rather humorous for them to build up to Rousey's involvement in such a way that would make people want to remember this specific incident.

The ending to Survivor Series 2015 is practically rehash of SummerSlam 2013, with Roman Reigns as Daniel Bryan, the face who gets screwed after finally winning the title by a heel authority figure (the same heel authority figure, in fact), and Sheamus as Randy Orton, the guy who cashes in and then joins up with said heel authority figure. It wasn't well-received at all, for a variety of reasons:

Again, Seven Year Rule. It's only been two years, so everyone can see the parallels.

Neither of them are over enough to make it work. Reigns has mild popularity at best at this point, while Sheamus has been regarded as irrelevant and no one, not even the company itself, wanted him to be champion in the first place.

The reason the original storyline worked was because of the Reality Subtext to it and the fact that Bryan was already massively over to begin with. Daniel Bryan as the popular, plucky underdog face against Randy Orton, The Chosen One of management who's been protected by the company for practically his entire career. The fans aren't dumb and this isn't the 80s — even the average casual fan is much smarter than they used to be, thanks to the advent of the Internet and the destruction of kayfabe back in the 90s and even before that. Everyone knows that Reigns is the corporate pick — he hasn't lost a one-on-one match clean since the start of his singles career and his mega push earlier in the year cemented it. That's not even accounting for the fact that "popular rebel-face vs. heel authority figure" is basically Austin vs McMahon with a fresh coat of paint, which has been done to death with nearly every single heel authority figure in the company for the last fifteen years, since at least the Attitude Era. It's as if the company is trying to set him up for constant failure and they're just completely oblivious to it.

If there's a babyface tag team with a large & small guy, often the team will break up by having the larger one turn heel and attack the smaller partner, with the justification being that said partner was holding the larger one back. This has been done with Cryme Tyme, The Prime Time Players & as of 2017, Enzo and Cass

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40,000 and other Warhammer products have new revisions brought out every four or five years, that being the length of time most players stick with the hobby, according to Games Workshop.

Magic: The Gathering will reuse popular themes after a several-year hiatus, reasoning that enough players had come and gone to make them seem new (and that players who had been around for them the first time would be happy to see them back). For example, multicolor cards were a theme in 1994's Legends, 2000's Invasion, 2005's Ravnica: City of Guilds, 2008's Shards of Alara, and 2012's Return to Ravnica. Speaking of Return to Ravnica, they've settled on seven years as being about the right amount of time to revisit a setting, as was done with both the Mirrodin and Ravnica settings. (Although they broke this habit by revisiting Zendikar after six years, and Innistrad after only four and a half.) Note that there is an underlying game-balance justification that influences some of this, since a common format for sanctioned tournaments allows only cards from a certain number of the most recent releases to be used, about two years or so. Older cards are periodically rotated out of the whitelist, so one of the easier ways to maintain balance is to make sure some newly-released cards fill similar niches to ones that were recently rotated out.

LEGO will always have a Space-like, underwater-like, castle-like or robot-like theme. Only the characters and sets are new. Justified in that the sets will contain enough new parts or features to make it worthwhile.

In the town theme, new police and fire stations are released on a 3 year cycle, like clockwork.

Lego's Star Wars line has run long enough that they now rerelease vehicles that already got playsets. This began in 2004 exclusively for OT sets because LEGOs style changed widely and made some sets look side by side like cars from the 50s next to ones from the 90s and flesh colored figures were introduced. Now the quality of the design updates vary as many models can´t be designed that much better unless they change the size and price range (Slave One for example is the same thing with different colors and functions since 2002).

They run with this trope sometimes. A set of smaller police cars and firetrucks were on shelves constantly from 2005 till 2013 because they figured kids would need basic things like them all the time.

Many action figure companies (especially back in the '90s, and especiallyKenner) release versions of a figure or vehicle from a couple years ago with a new color scheme, and attempt to pass it off as a new one. Usually by this time the original is no longer for sale and has been dropped from the listing on the back of the box/card. Amusingly, sometimes the "new" figure will have completely new flavor text and new names for its special actions and accessories, even though it's just describing the same thing in different words.

Transformers, in particular, makes absolutely no attempt to hide this. In fact, in the franchise's first year, several sets of characters who were just each other in different colors came out all at once, with the toys sold on shelves right next to each other and the cartoon and comic book making no effort to disguise their identicalness. In fact, the cartoon took it Up to Eleven, using variously-colored Starscreams as generic Mooks.

Interestingly, this element has actually become embraced by much of the Transformers fan base—when a new toy is released of a character who was once well known for having a variety of repaints, demand will rise among fans for recolored versions of that toy representing his recolors from prior series. In addition to the aforementioned Starscream, Bumblebee being recolored as Cliffjumper is a common recurring theme, with a fewexceptions. Additionally, Transformers recolors are rather atypical in that they usually represent completely new characters who just look similar to the old ones, as opposed to old characters in different colors (which, conversely, tend to be slow sellers).

Webcomics

This strip from Shortpacked! shows a toy fan realizing the frustrations inherent when companies take advantage of this trope because the fans let them.

Expect Multiplex to inform you when this trope is in play with a current movie. Jason being a movie snob requires him to point them out.

Web Original

LoadingReadyRun parodied this by pretending to be remaking a sketch that had been released just a few weeks earlier. As it turned out one of their members was manipulating them into position so he could use them for his own sketch, which the others had shot down.

Unless they're extremely popular, like Dora the Explorer, shows on children's networks and programming blocks don't usually last more than four seasons.

For decades, Disney would release their animated films in theaters every seven years, starting with the re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) in 1944. Walt Disney thought that after seven years, there would be a new crop of viewers who hadn't seen the earlier release. This way, Disney reasoned, it would refresh the movies to a new generation of viewers. This was considered such holy writ that, when then-CEO Michael Eisner looked to release Disney movies to the VHS market in a desperate attempt to save the company, there was more than the usual amount of teeth-gnashing and doomsaying over how he was selling the farm and no one would ever buy Disney products again.

After Disney permanently switched over to re-releasing their films on VHS rather than in theaters, Eisner and co. found a way to apply this "generational" line of thinking to home releases with the creation of the so-called "Disney Vault"; basically films would be re-released on video every seven years, and then would be pulled from circulation after a year or so in order to create artificial scarcity. In order to entice people to keep buying the releases every seven years, each new release would feature updated picture quality compared to the version released seven years prior, and once DVDs came out the films were given new bonus material. The creation of the Disney Movies Anywhere internet streaming service looks like it will put an end to this practice however.

Unfortunately, there has been onenegative consequence of this during the last year of the aforementioned Eisner era.note Namely, the disappearance of fine details and alteration of colors. Both of which still occur in the blu-ray release.

This may have also inspired George Lucas to both theatrically release the updated Star Wars original trilogy and avoid the mistakes Eisner and Disney made. The updates and the long absence from theaters also helped justify the original trilogy reshows.

Family Guy had an episode in 2001 where Lois begins fighting using "Tae Jitsu" because Peter runs all over her and doesn't respect her. Fast forward 9 years, and there's another episode where Lois becomes a boxer because Peter runs all over her and doesn't respect her.

Really, "Lois aggressively pursues (X activity) because Peter doesn't respect her" is a stock plot for Family Guy. How about the episode where Lois becomes a lounge singer, or where she becomes a model (over the objections of Peter AND her father)?

Also anytime Meg goes on full Yandere mode, like in "Barely Legal" (2006), "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair" (2011) and "Friends Without Benefits" (2012). The second episode at least acknowledged that it had happened before, by a character who was present for both plots.

Also, Quagmire has been married and regretted it twice (once to a Yandere, and once to an elderly prostitute).

The Family Guy/Simpsons Crossover Special (2014 season opener for Family Guy) had its kickoff plot as Peter writing a newspaper comic which featured a terribly sexist joke, which got him in trouble with feminists, reprising, in part, a pre-cancellation plot (though it was the main plot of the episode "I am Peter, Hear Me Roar."

By the 1980s, because Hanna-Barbera had been around for so long, they were able to reuse jokes and gags (and yes, even plots) from older productions in newer ones. For instance:

Rockin' With Judy Jetsonnote One of the "Superstars 10" TV movies., essentially a loose, expanded remake of the 1960s episode, A Date With Jet Screamer, reuses the "secret message mixup" bit.

The same movie reuses the "hairstyle" gag from a different episode, only with Judy instead of Jane.

During The Golden Age of Animation, this trope was employed partly due to the fact that movie theaters wouldn't rerun older cartoons anyway, particularly if they were from the black and white era once Technicolor became the standard. So plots could be re-used after enough years had gone by. The Popeye series was particularly guilty of this, once Famous Studios took over.

Often found in Looney Tunes shorts in remakes, like Back Alley Oproar and Notes to You both featuring a gag where Sylvester the cat singing while one of the other characters is trying to sleep. Others include the Xylophone Gag, the shooting gallery gag (where one character takes a mischievous child character to a shooting gallery, and the kid makes it seem like the shooter is shooting the barker in the head), and the powder room gag (where Bugs throws a match into a room with gunpowder, and Sam refuses to go get it after the third time, resulting in a big kablooey).

In some shorts, a main character will be married or have a girlfriend who will disappear with no explanation, only for a new love interest to appear in another short. Daffy Duck has been married at least three times for the purposes of situational comedy.

During the 1950s, MGM's cartoons used the plot of "a character constantly runs out of the building to avoid waking up his grouchy master". This occurred in Rock-a-Bye Bear (1952), Deputy Droopy (1955) and Royal Cat Nap (1958).

There have been instances where a character admits to doing something bad, and during his speech, he makes a subtle "The Reason You Suck" Speech to more famous people standing by him, all of whom are sporting nervous grins as he speaks. This occurred in "Butters' Very Own Episode" (2001) and "Up the Down Steroid" (2004).

Also whenever Cartman's racism makes him paranoid about potential disasters, such as "Pee" (2009) and "World War Zimmerman" (2013).

Alternative Title(s):No One Has A Memory Over Two Years Old, Nohamotyo, Seven Year Rule

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